“Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession’s phlegm, and needs no ancestors.”

Union of hearts, not hands, does a marriage make, and sympathy of mind keeps love awake.

Let never man be bold enough to say, Thus, and no farther shall my passion stray: The first crime, past, compels us into more, And guilt grows fate, that was but choice, before.

Let shining Charity adorn your zeal, The noblest impulse generous minds can feel.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

Hide not thy tears; weep boldly, and be proud to give the flowing virtue manly way; it is nature’s mark to know an honest heart by.

O marriage! marriage! what a curse is thine, Where hands alone consent and hearts abhor.

Shun fear, it is the ague of the soul! a passion man created for himself–for sure that cramp of nature could not dwell in the warm realms of glory.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Art, however innocent, looks like deceiving.

The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium.

First, then, a woman will, or won’t, – depend on’t; If she will do’t, she will; and there’s an end on’t. But, if she won’t, since safe and sound your trust is, Fear is affront: and jealousy injustice.

Joys, which we do not know, we do not wish.

Shame on those breasts of stone that cannot melt in soft adoption of another’s sorrow.

Law that shocks equity is reason’s murderer.

Order, thou eye of action.

Servile doubt argues an impotence of mind, that says we fear because we dare not meet misfortunes.

Offspring, the due performance on religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one’s wife alone.

The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.

I would like to be like my father and all the rest of my ancestors who never married.

Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.